Julian Assange focus on Trump’s motives ensnares ex-FBI head, US representative

Bloomberg

Assange was swept up in President Donald Trump’s campaign against embarrassing leaks, his lawyer told a London court, as the WikiLeaks founder kicked off his fight against his extradition to the US.
The decision to pursue Assange, which only occurred after Trump was elected, was driven by the president’s desire to stifle damaging White House leaks, said Edward Fitzgerald, Assange’s lawyer. He cited former FBI Director James Comey, who described a conversation about jailing journalists.
“The prosecution became a political imperative,” Fitzgerald said on the first day of the London trial. Assange “was a symbol of all that Trump condemned.”
The 48-year-old faces a maximum prison term of 175 years in the US for charges that he conspired to obtain and disclose classified documents passed to him by former Army intelligence analyst Chelsea Manning.
The documents, including 90,000 Afghanistan war-related activity reports, 400,000 Iraq war-related reports and 250,000 State Department cables, were published by WikiLeaks in 2010 and 2011.
The hearing, the first part of a month-long trial, was expected to take place at an east London court where a noisy crowd of hundreds of supporters had to be warned to stay quiet, because Assange said he was struggling to concentrate.
Fitzgerald doubled down on allegations that he made last week that Trump was prepared to offer the WikiLeaks founder a pardon if he “played ball” and denied Russia’s involvement in Democratic National Committee leaks during the 2016 election.
Former-US Representative Dana Rohrabacher “wanted us to believe they were acting on behalf of the president,” Fitzgerald said. Rohrabacher “presented it as a win-win solution,” that would benefit Trump and “put a stop to” Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation, he said.